Basking in the soothing Goop that is the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial

While taking in all the rigorous fashion analysis and ludicrous testimony highlights related to the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial, note what's missing: tension. Your shoulders are relaxed, your gut unperturbed, yes? Are you sitting down? Bet your bottom cakes are nowhere near your seat's edge.

That's because Sanderson v. Paltrow isn't merely a low-stakes case in terms of its impact on culture and society. Unlike the scandals related to the Alex Murdaugh case, it contains no shocking reminders of how easily corruptible our legal system is.

Compared to toxic media circuses surrounding the coverage of Depp v. Heard and the Megan Thee Stallion shooting trial, this is a Sundance Film Festival cocktail reception. Rich white people riching. Content we can all get behind.

The outcome contains virtually no jeopardizing implications in terms of setting a damaging legal precedent or traumatizing victims of violence or abuse. Rather, there's a throwback gratification to this business – it's been a while since a megastar's outsized presence in a courtroom was, in fact, the whole show.

Actor Gwyneth Paltrow sits in court during her civil trial over a collision with another skier on March 27, 2023, in Park City, Utah. (Rick Bowmer-Pool/Getty Images)

Everyone is amply aware that Paltrow – Academy Award-winning actor turned woo-woo influencer queen – does not live like you and me. But neither does 76-year-old retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, the man seeking $300,000 in damages for claims of negligently causing injury related to a skiing accident that occurred at Deer Valley Ski Resort in February 2016. Paltrow may be incredibly wealthy, but Sanderson is well-off enough to vacation at a Park City spot where season passes cost just shy of $3,000.  

Seven years ago – that's a full Trump presidency, along with parts of an Obama administration and Biden's – both Sanderson and Paltrow were chilling at Deer Valley when Sanderson alleges the Lady of Goop slammed into him from behind on a bunny slope. Then, he claims, she imperiously scooted away from the scene with nary a care in the world. Sanderson says he sustained broken ribs, a concussion and permanent brain damage from the collision.

Paltrow is countersuing for a symbolic $1 in damages along with costs related to her attorney's fees, alleging that Sanderson bumped into her and ruined her ski day with her children Apple and Moses, her eventual husband Brad Falchuk and his children. Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday, after which the case will go to the eight-person jury for deliberation.

Performing arts connoisseurs will tell you that tension is drama's backbone. Yet its utter absence from the trial coverage slaloming through our newsfeeds adds to its diversionary value.

There's no shortage of analysis related to the lawsuit, but very little of it has to do with whether Paltrow is more believable than Sanderson because ultimately, that doesn't matter. Neither Paltrow nor Sanderson is especially likable or unlikeable.  Both ski, for crying out loud, a pastime with patrician associations, like equestrian sports or loudly firing the help. 

Paltrow is the celebrity equivalent of the oatmeal cashmere capelet: she's a utility piece that makes anything look expensive but aside from her occasional spikes of pointlessness (which mainly consist of praising pseudoscientific hooey such as vaginal steaming) doesn't give us much to get excited about one way or another.

By and large, she's a bone-broth-sipping Hollywood fixture whose main calling seems to be promoting better orgasms and intermittent fasting. If the jury finds in favor of Sanderson, nobody would be surprised if Paltrow turned to her assistant and deposited a still-warm jade egg in their hand, instructing them to overnight it to Sotheby's with emphasis on its provenance, all to secure the funds to pay the damages.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow looks on before leaving the courtroom, where she is accused in a lawsuit of crashing into a skier during a 2016 family ski vacation, March 21, 2023, in Park City, Utah. (Rick Bowmer-Pool/Getty Images)

Sanderson was a private citizen before this, which means we don't really know whether he's the underdog in this situation or a litigious man who saw an opportunity to pad his retirement accounts when he realized he'd come into close contact, albeit forcefully, with a woman whose net worth is estimated to be around $200 million.

Central to Sanderson's case is his legal team's allegation that injuries Sanderson sustained in the crash caused changes to his personality, that the "outgoing, gregarious person" he was before the fateful day he crossed planks with Paltrow was replaced by a man who is "no longer charming," as one of his lawyers put in in his opening statement. His girlfriend broke up with him, he says.

A neuroradiology specialist testified that the active, hobby-driven person Sanderson used to be pre-Gwyneth vanished after the accident, robbing him of the ability to take pleasure in the delights he once did, including wine tasting.  

Somehow his debilitating condition didn't stop him from hiking up steep hills, scuba diving, biking along the canals in Amsterdam, or appreciating the Yves Saint Laurent museum in Marrakech, as seen in Wednesday's slide show displaying Sanderson engaged in all of these activities after the crash.

This may inform the decision of Blythe Danner's daughter to show up to court instead of settling with Sanderson. If he wanted a show, he chose the wrong person to audition against.

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Since the trial began on March 21, Paltrow has sashayed into the courtroom serving "this is beneath me" face, gold jewelry, eyewear borrowed from the wardrobe department of "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," and enough couture knits to keep the internet's aspirational fashionistas eating good every day. Sanderson's lawyer Kristin VanOrman was demonstrably entranced if not entirely enchanted.

"May I ask how tall you are?" VanOrman inquired in a now-famous exchange from last Friday.

"I'm just under 5-foot-10," Paltrow responded, "I think I'm shrinking though."

"You and me both!" VanOrman commiserated. "I am so jealous. I have to wear four-inch heels just to make it to 5-foot-5."

"Oh! They're very nice," said Paltrow kindly, reminding us of why she's racked up so many industry nods. Maybe that's mean since the compliment did seem genuine . . . which makes our point.

Despite what some armchair legal strategists say, Paltrow's choice to embrace and play up her rich bitch image may end up being a winning gambit. If nothing else, the woman is sickeningly self-aware; she has to know that it's pointless to try to gain the jury's sympathy. Instead, she's aiming for their respect.

That theory may explain why Paltrow has comported herself in a way that conveys she views the situation as, at best, a challenging switch-up from her daily regimen of infrared saunas, dry brushing and light travel, and at worst, an inconvenience visited upon her by an opportunistic herb.

In summary, even if Paltrow loses this lawsuit she still comes out ahead. She will have given the internet labels to research and price tags to gag over (the $250 notebook! the $9,000 private ski lessons!) and, crucial to her pudenda-empowering brand, she will have upstaged a gauche old white guy who blames her for his loss of dating swagger. A well-to-do person will win no matter what happens, but in a change from recent world events, none of us regular people will lose. What absurdity. What a relief.